COLLEGE BASKETBALL / NCAA TOURNAMENTS : For Bruins, Kingdome Comes : Men’s West: UCLA outruns Connecticut, 102-96, to earn its first trip to the Final Four since 1980.

Too fast to corner, too proud to sag, the UCLA Bruins are giants again.

Fourteen years of frustration and fitful comparisons to the shadows of the past ended Saturday afternoon, with a basketball tossed up toward eternity and Coach Jim Harrick shaking with relief, redemption and triumph.

“I’ve been here for seven years, and I’ve been asked, ‘Why haven’t you been to the Final Four?’ ” Harrick said. “And I’ll tell you, because it’s hard .”

Playing as though they were chasing--and overtaking--ghosts, the top-ranked, turbocharged Bruins swept past Connecticut, 102-96, in the NCAA West Regional final before 14,399.

It earned UCLA its first Final Four berth since 1980, and a chance at the school’s first national title since 1975, when the national semifinals are held Saturday in Seattle’s Kingdome. The Bruins will meet the winner of today’s East Regional final between Massachusetts and Oklahoma State.

Here, as the celebration carried on, the nets were cut down and, one by one, the players climbed atop a ladder and stared over the crowd, and, for once, the birthright felt right.

For once, UCLA’s glorious, incomparable, burdensome tradition seemed to lift them all higher.

“It’s kind of overwhelming at the moment,” said fifth-year senior Ed O’Bannon, who screamed and then flung the ball up into the dark heights of the Oakland Coliseum Arena in the game’s last seconds.

“It’s the best view I’ve ever had. I’ve been here five years, and it’s been up-and-down for me. I’m happy we got a chance for all of us to cut down the nets and go up that ladder.”

But with the focus that has kept UCLA moving from day to day, victory to victory, and celebration to celebration, the players emphasized that the Final Four was neither their end goal nor the fulfillment of all their hopes.

“It fulfills some of this season’s promise, but not nearly all of it,” said sophomore guard Cameron Dollar, who ignited the Bruins with five assists, three steals, six rebounds and uncompromising defense against Husky forward Ray Allen, who led all scorers with 36 points but struggled to get shots off in the second half.

“We didn’t come into this just thinking get to Seattle. We want to go there and win two more games. That’s the promise.”

Once the Bruins heard that the Huskies were saying that UCLA might not be able to handle basketball at the speed UConn was capable of playing it, the goal against UConn (28-5) was to answer.

With senior point guard Tyus Edney (22 points, 10 assists, only three turnovers) bolting downcourt, and freshmen Toby Bailey and J.R. Henderson finishing attacks with swoops to the rim, UCLA (29-2) responded by running UConn off the court.

“These guys, they don’t know us,” O’Bannon said. “They don’t know that we’ve got the fastest basketball player in the country.

“You try and run? Fine. But don’t say that we can’t run. That’s like shooting yourself in the foot.”

Said UConn Coach Jim Calhoun: “They were able to finish plays, and we were not, and that, in essence, became the game. We put 96 on the board and it wasn’t enough.”

Though UCLA was consistently outpacing UConn all game long, there were a few key periods when the frenetic pace seemed to reach its peak. UCLA took a lead midway through the first half when the Huskies went on a run of turnovers. UConn guards Kevin Ollie and Doron Sheffer melted down under the heat for a combined six first-half turnovers.

But at the end of the half, an Allen scoring burst against Bruin forward Charles O’Bannon closed UCLA’s lead to four, 45-41, with 3.6 seconds left.

After a timeout, Edney, in a mini-duplication of his end-to-end buzzer-beater to beat Missouri last week, took a pass in the UCLA backcourt, zoomed past midcourt, then pulled up for a 25-foot jumper that swished after the buzzer sounded, giving UCLA a 48-41 lead at halftime.

“Those types of plays are like taking a needle and putting it in a balloon,” Harrick said. “They just deflate you.”

After the basket, Edney put his hands on his hips, like a gunslinger, and stared at Dollar as the Bruins headed off court.

“That was just emotion coming out,” said Edney, who was named most valuable player of the West Regional. “I was just glad we got the momentum going into halftime.”

Meanwhile, Ed O’Bannon was struggling with his shot. He was only one for five in the first half, and finished with 15 points.

But in the second half, Bailey and Henderson combined to score 28 points, and contributed a combined 44 points for the day, and on one crucial second-half run, Bailey and Henderson scored key baskets in a 13-6 sprint that raised UCLA’s lead to 82-68 with 8:27 remaining.

Bailey led UCLA with a career-high 26 points and nine rebounds. Henderson scored 18 points.

“It’s a tribute to this team that Ed didn’t have his usual Superman performance, and we still were able to win going away,” assistant coach Lorenzo Romar said.

Down the stretch, UCLA kept converting both fast-break opportunities and its free-throw chances, and UConn could come no closer than six points, and that was with 18 seconds left.

At the buzzer, with the ball still in space, Harrick was crushed in a hug from assistant Mark Gottfried, who has been with him all seven UCLA seasons, and both men looked near tears.

“He’s been getting needles stuck in him from alumni, the media, a lot of people for a lot of years,” Dollar said of Harrick. “I think that was his chance to look around and just say, ‘Yeah!’

“I’m satisfied that I got to see how it made him glow.”